Beauty Bar Turns 20 – 5.31.15

A significant amount of my life has been spent in Beauty Bar. Just do a search on my site to see how often it comes up. It’s a lot. I have photographed events in Beauty Bars in Vegas, LA, Austin and the Brooklyn location. LA and Austin all had their time and are gone now but their are still Beauty Bars in San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, Dallas and of course the original location on 14th Street in Manhattan.

Last night Beauty Bar celebrated twenty years since opening the doors of that first NYC location and I had to be there to party with so many familiar faces. Ironically the anniversary event was actually at Webster Hall with the after party at Beauty Bar but they made the middle floor of Webster look like Beauty Bar since Beauty Bar isn’t licensed to have live music… and there was a lot of live music.

The Prettiots opened the night and I was really excited to see them since I am doing a photo project with their front woman Kay. They were great which was a relief since I had only heard one of their songs before last night. I was a huge fan of Kay already but it’s pretty hard not to fall in love with her after watching them play.

Flor de Toloache played next and they were an all female mariachi band which was kinda rad. It also marks the second time in two weeks that I have seen a mariachi band. Up next were Daddy Long Legs who put on a hell of a show and were the most rockin’ band of the night. Still not psyched on the dudes with perms look coming back, but I will forgive them because they were great. The night ended with the band from the Hedwig & The Angry Inch Broadway musical playing a bunch of covers and they brought out my old pal and nightlife legend Michael T to a Bowie song. It was a pretty fun way to wrap things up.

In between bands there was a sword swallowing performance, two burlesque acts (hi Betttina May!), DJs and hosting insanity from Joey Arias. All in all a great night but the best part was seeing all the old friends and Beauty Bar family that I rarely see now that we all really old and the East Village has become overrun with douche bags.

Congrats Mike and Paul on 20 years as a NYC institution. Here’s to 20 more.

Click here to see all the photos from the Beauty Bar 20th Anniversary party at Webster Hall.

Ps. These photos are mildly NSFW thanks to the Burlesque and my friend’s boobs.

The Angry Inch

Beauty Bar Owners Mike & Paul

Michael T

Bettina May

The Prettiots

Flor De Toloache

Daddy Long Legs

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